


Therein lay the thrill

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ASoIaF Kink Meme, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:57:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roose always wanted the younger sister. </p>
<p>Written for the asoiafkinkmeme on LiveJournal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Therein lay the thrill

Bethany is abed, her eyes swollen from weeping, her face splotched red with the ugly evidence of her sorrow. It is not the first child that she has lost since she came to this queer, still place, but it is the loss that has cut the deepest, thinks Barbrey, massaging her pounding temples, for it is the first that has lived beyond the space of a few hours. This time, her sister had been dealt a cruel trick, a son, an heir, that had lived six months, long enough for his mother to become attached to him, long enough for his father to rest on the knowledge that his line’s continuance had been ensured, at last. But the gods, such as they were, _if_ they even were, had fickly taken back the child, leaving his mother to sob helplessly into her pillow, to lock her door against her husband lest they bring forth the further strangeness of unexpected death in the silent halls of the Dreadfort. 

So Barbrey had come, reluctantly, if she was honest with herself. She did love Bethany, could sympathize with her sister’s agony as she failed, time and again, to grant Roose Bolton the children that would guarantee his House, so ancient and yet now dwindling away. She remembered their childhood, so isolated in the westernmost reaches of the North, with only each other for company, really, and how Bethany’s eyes had blazed with rage on her behalf after she had been cast off for a greater match than the daughter of a small lord. But she also thought of Bethany’s marriage, how she had been raised high, taking an ancient name steeped in power and blood, how her letters had dwindled into nothing more than a few inane pleasantries until they ceased altogether, how strange she had become, how silent, how pale, and how cold. Barbrey’s love was mottled with resentment, with loathing, especially when she beheld the unquestioning obedience that her sister, once so proud and bold, granted to her husband, and when she thought on how Dustin and Ryswell and their like would always pale beside the red and pink banners of Bolton. Sometimes she wondered how things might have been different, had she been the eldest. But it did not do to dwell on that now. 

But she held Bethany as she grieved, forced her to take some broth, called for the Maester to bring dreamwine to her bedside so that her rest was peaceful, unclouded by nightmarish visions of dead children, their skeletal hands reaching for her, their sightless eyes beseeching her, fleshless fingers snagging on the hem of her gown. Such was the ugliness that Bethany had shared with her, considering such things a just punishment for vague sins that she refused to name, hideous offenses that Barbrey could not be trusted to bear. She had listened to the hellish litany, had untangled her snarled hair, had bathed her slack body, still heavy from so many fruitless pregnancies, had sat by her side clasping her clammy hand until it went limp with sleep. 

And now she sat in her sister’s solar, a smallish room filled with ledgers, Bethany’s orderly writing mingling with the crabbed scrawl of the Dreadfort steward, head in her hands, blood pounding in her ears. She could hear the pulse of her heartbeat as she bent almost double, trying to erase the last few hours from her memory, wondering if she should send a raven to Willam. Barbrey smiled grimly as she thought of her husband, knowing that he would bid her to remain here as long as she was needed, insisting that he could manage without her. Always so self-effacing, ever gallant. Sometimes it galled her, his almost spineless kindness, and she longed for some sort of roughness, some protest or reprimand to her desires. But they never come, and they never will.

*

She had been so pliant, so willing, when he married her, but in the intervening years, Bethany’s heart and mind have hardened, the lessons that Roose had taught her about restraint and detachment and the importance of subtlety taken so strongly to heart that all that is left of his wife is a mask, carved of ice, a silent presence glowering in the shadows behind him. And when she fails yet again to deliver the promised, the hoped-for heir, there is little that he can do to comfort her in her grief. It is the only emotion that he has seen her bear for months, her bed of tears and blood far too visceral. So after a few half-murmured condolences, he turns away, reassured that she will not die, giving himself that one guarantee that he will not bury a second wife in such a brief time. The smallfolk talk, far too much, despite Roose’s many precautions, and while they have no feelings for cold Bethany Ryswell with her artificial smiles and haughty airs, her armor against what she has always seen as hatred and fear directed toward the Bolton name, they are quick to judge, quick to gossip, quick to condemn. 

Bethany had been a willing pupil, perhaps too eager to absorb the history of the house that had swallowed her whole, and her own hard, practical nature was always well-suited to becoming Lady Bolton and all of the unpleasantries that that title entailed. She had not flinched when she realized just how justice was meted out below the Dreadfort, when she learned that words like _mercy_ and _kindness_ were as alien to those hushed halls as laughter and light were to the chambers that lay underneath the holdfast, places where only desperate promises were whispered and screams echoed unheard. 

Oh, she had been willing enough to accept it, even to occasionally partake of it all. And Roose had been amused at first, then felt a sort of queer admiration for his wife, as he watched the way her lips quirked in a half-smile when she had been permitted to discipline a disobedient maidservant, when she watched her lord husband rule with a restrained coldness that almost conflicted with his mild and quiet manner. She had adapted well; she had almost flourished here, like a poisonous vine forcing its way between slick stones in the same dungeons where she’d stood, hands reddened, clutching the knife as though she were dressing a fowl for their supper table, eyes alight, face fervent. 

 

It had begun to sicken him. The excess of it. The pleasure that she obviously took in what Roose merely viewed as obligation, as tradition, as mindless tasks that filled the long bleak days that stretched before them in their remote home. It brought him no delight; it was merely something to fill the hours.

When Barbrey came, he thought little of it aside from the satisfaction that Ryswell was still in thrall to Bolton, and by extension, Dustin. Barbrey would see naught but her sister’s plight, nurse her back to health with her house’s customary distrust of Southron Maesters and their ministrations, and be gone in a rustle of her dull black skirts with nary a backward glance. But he watched as she tended to Bethany, steady hands laying a cool cloth on a fevered brow, spooning soup into an unwilling mouth, and was pleased. He had a grim appreciation for his goodsister, how she had stanched the rage just below the surface when the Starks had yanked her prize from her slender fingers, how she had so nimbly borne the shame of being cast off for greater aspirations, bound to a lesser house. There was strength in Barbrey Dustin, a keen pragmatism in her that did not extend to her scheming, scraping father, and a true self-mastery that her sister, despite all appearances, lacked. She was nothing but herself. 

While he felt no affection for her, he had always had a cool fascination with her conduct. It was obvious that she had no love for him. It amused Roose to observe the barely-concealed dislike in her mannerisms and her tone of voice, always sharp and just this side of rude. She was not intimidated by his position, nor did she take any store in the ugly history and hushed rumors that surrounded the Dreadfort. There was no fear in her eyes when she confronted him (for every conversation with Barbrey Dustin was at the least, a slight altercation), only malice. She was unimpressed. 

Barbrey had protested when their marriage had been announced, humiliating her sister, so proud at the news and so relieved to have had her future decided. While her father had heartily chastised her, forcing an apology to Lord Bolton, who sat unbothered and courteously at table, it had been sarcastic, acidic, and marvelously insincere. When Bethany’s children had died, she had been the first to levy blame at her silent goodbrother, whose lack of grief at the stillbirths and miscarriages had arisen her suspicion. Roose had permitted her to spent her fury on him in the privacy of his solar, her accusations dying in the gloom before they could reach his wife’s ears. And when she had taken up with Brandon Stark, he had listened to Bethany’s doubts about the matter, had admired Barbrey’s grim determination to reach for power in what small space was allowed to her, never understanding the love that Barbrey, only a girl really, had borne for the foolish boy, misconstruing affection for ambition. 

He approached her chair that evening as she sat dozing in her sister’s solar, cold hand closing over hers with just a shade too much force than he deemed necessary. She did not protest, only met his blank, insistent stare with her own pointed one. 

“Bethany,” was all she said, whispering, for the bedchamber lay on the other side of the door. 

“Do not worry about your sister,” he said, pulling her to her feet, “Have a care for yourself, Lady Dustin.” 

She permitted him to lead her to her guest quarters, and when he pulled her to the bed, she did not stop him, closing her eyes as he meticulously removed her gown. Perhaps she thought of Brandon Stark, ashes now in a marble tomb. Perhaps she thought of her genial fool of a husband. Perhaps she enjoyed the moment for what it was. Roose did not trouble himself with possibilities though, taking his pleasure in the way her skin flushed at his touch, despite her best attempts to remain stoic, enjoying the way her features betrayed their disapproving mask as he pleasured her. There was restraint, there had been cold control, but it was crumbling, and therein lay the thrill, and his satisfaction.


End file.
